Selkie414

I was almost going to do a Christmas Filler instead of the next strip in line, partially because I feel really “tempting fate”-y about doing this particular subject on Christmas Day, but I instead chose to keep with my tradition of updating through the usual holidays when able. So, here we go.

This is a better lesson than a fairy tale for her. As much as it stings, when she learns about what can happen when you say the wrong thing at the wrong time and break the wrong promise over a relatively minor promise in the great scheme of things she won’t do it again. A good lesson, if admittedly a very painful one.

I wasn’t even sure she was reacting to what was being said and it wasn’t some bizarre flash-in instead.

But I don’t think it’s in what happened so much as it is “Adult Fear”. Selkie is talking about being bullied and out in the cold and becoming so weak and sick needing to go to the ER. I mean, what is Pohl hasn’t been there? Would anyone have been able to treat her? The way she’s clutching her child tells me (a mother of 3 babies myself) she’s listening to this tale, and as much as she feels for Kenzie, praying with all her heart that she NEVER has to go through anything like that happening to her children

*dons pipe and mustache* It’s PSYCHOANALYSIS TIME.
I think that that Freudian slip might show overattachment to this fine webcomic – if you’re replacing the main character’s name with your daughter’s.
Overattachment to this webcomic is of course a good thing, so I wouldn’t worry too much.

I’m not seeing that as a look of horror (although I may be wrong). Sai Fen just told Selkie a fairy tale of her people – one that Sai Fen liked enough to dedicate a sculpture to it. She probably thought it was a cool way to introduce Selkie to her heritage. Instead, Selkie is hurt. Not what Sai Fen intended, I think. That looks like “Oh, no, I didn’t mean for you to take it like THIS!” to me.

Selkie broke a promise (to Todd), got hurt, then broke another promise (to Heather). I’m with Spliced, above. I think Sai Fen is putting together the pieces of what Selkie isn’t saying, and is shocked to learn how much danger she was in, particularly the fact that there’s a bully. Also, back in panel 2, that there’s a girl Selkie hates.

I think Pohl may have softened his account to his wife just a bit. Plus there’s a lot about Selkie’s life at school that he doesn’t know.

people who tell cautionary fairy tales and nursery rhymes of this sort (person commits minor, usually arbitrarily defined misdeed and gets hugely disproportionate punishment) to a child must have forgotten just how literally children tend to take things. it is awfully easy to traumatizea child this way. example: child sucks thumb, is terrified that someone is going to come and cut them off with scissors because of hearing the wrong nursery rhyme. in selkie’s case the impact may be even worse because of the coincidental reinforcement of the ‘lesson’ courtesy of truck. selkie may very well now believe that heather will do something awful and permanent to her. no blame to sai fen. she was just answering a question and talking about her art, (as what artist wouldn’t?), but some serious damage control may be needed.

If my mother told me a story about an evil stepmother ordering the murder of the girl, and when that didn’t work, poisoning her herself, or another evil stepmother turning the girl into the family slave, or the evil mother left her two children in the woods to starve to death, or the father’s idiotic boasting caused the girl to be threatened with death several times, and then she has to give her baby up to an evil dwarf, and these stories traumatized me, I don’t believe I would tell these stories to MY children.

Yet these stories are hundreds of years old, meaning they have been told by parents to children generation after generation after generation.

This, to me, says that fairy tales do NOT traumatize children. Even ones where people get mutilated or eaten by beasts.